One can find a range of safety features which are common to particular types of trucks including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On the majority of stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals too. Additionally, some manufacturers are providing more features like for example speed controls which can reduce the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more info, there are many articles available on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Service and Support
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of service and support is a very essential part of forklift selection. There seem to be a range of new players within the lift truck industry every year. Although they offer a nice price and a decent forklift design, if they do not provide the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you should be prepared for significant aggravation when the forklift breaks. Every model of lift truck goes down sooner or later and service, parts and general questions will probably have to be addressed at some point.
Usually, you will want a local repair shop or dealer with a huge supply of parts for the specific make and model you are buying. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop and check their parts room so as to try to understand how many parts they store. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the part you require, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a regional or local distribution facility.
In addition, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific models are currently being utilized within your area. This is really important for specialty trucks including turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being utilized in their service area that you should assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. Additionally, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model as well.